Gambling Addiction can be helped with Hypnotherapy

Health Magazine News. According to Hypnotherapy experts, using Hypnotherapy and NLP to retrain the mind and to stop the person who has Gambling Addiction to continue with their addiction can help gamblers. Gambling Addiction affects millions of people around the world and according to experts, more and more people are becoming addicted because of the Internet with the huge amounts of online gambling that is available.

In2town Lifestyle Magazine decided to look at what Gambling addiction is and why people become addicted to gambling.

Gambling addiction is an obsessive and compulsive behaviour, which involves a person being addicted to gambling. Whether the gambling involves betting on horse racing, casino black jack tables or slot machines, the sufferer falls victim to compulsively seeking the ‘high’ gained from gambling.

So why do people become addicted to gambling? Gambling addiction is like any other addiction. As with drug addicts and alcoholics, gambling addicts suffer from a disease - it is incurable and progressive. Yet with treatment and a daily programme of recovery, it can be arrested and maintained.

When a gambling addict engages in gambling and the related behaviours that go with it, they experience an escape from their feelings. Addicts are individuals who very often do not know how to cope with their feelings and emotions. Thus follows behaviour to take them away from the present, leaving their emotional capacity hollow. The disease of addiction can be described as a "hole in the soul" - a spiritual void which gambling addicts attempt to fill with destructive behaviour and short-term highs.

Surprisingly, many gambling addicts describe the pull of gambling addiction as involving losing at gambling more than winning, although winning does provide an incredible high. The loss of money and possessions fills them with a desperate need for hope of gaining control again, leading them to act out compulsively on gambling behaviour over and over again.

What happens when a person is addicted to gambling? The person is unable to control their obsessive and compulsive gambling, addicts are taken to a very dark place, which grows increasingly worse over time. Losing families, jobs, houses, cars and all other possessions, but mostly self-respect, the gambling addict is left in a place of total unmanageability where their life has suffered complete destruction. Suicide is common amongst gambling addicts, as they see no other solution to their habit and loss of livelihood. Even though they want nothing more than to be free of their compulsion to gamble, they cannot stop, they do not know how to stop, and cannot see a life free of gambling.

Is it possible for a person addicted to gambling to recover? According to the experts a person will always be addicted to gambling like a person who is addicted to alcohol will always have a problem with drink but a person can learn to control their addiction by receiving therapy or by visiting a hypnotherapist expert where they can use NLP and Hypnotherapy to help retrain the mind and control the urges for gambling.

As with any addiction, for a person who is a gambling addict to begin recovery, they will need to stop their gambling behaviours in order for healing to begin. However, the problems, which a gambling addict needs to deal with, are in fact, not gambling. The obsessive and compulsive behaviours are not the problem – they are a symptom of the disease of addiction, revealing that something is very wrong within the person. As with drug addicts and alcoholics, the behaviour is caused by the addiction. The behaviour is not the cause. Yet a gambling addict will need to stop the behaviours to begin recovery, as the behaviours provide the escape from their problems, which they seek, allowing them to avoid the true problem.

Moving to other cities or locations (known as geographicals), staying away from casinos and other places associated with their addiction and other external elements, which can be blamed, may seem the right route to wellness. But the addiction is within the gambling addict and will surface wherever they are, no matter what they do, unless they treat the underlying problems and issues.

Claire Hegarty who is an expert in Hypnotherapy and works with a lot of people who are addicted to gambling has said that Gambling addiction can be helped with Hypnotherapy and NLP by refocusing the mind and taking away the urge to gamble. She also says that the route of the problem has to be tackled to help the person who is addicted to understand the reason behind the addiction before the recovery process can begin.